Tag: wittgenstein

Philosophy

Wittgenstein, Popper and the Poker

BY SEAN WALSH The scene. From time to time the dialectic gets feisty and on rare occasions almost physical. A meeting of the Cambridge 1946 Moral Science Club, according to some of those present, was one such occasion. Note that recollections differ, as they say1. What might have happened is this: the very intense Ludwig Wittgenstein threatened the visiting speaker, Karl Popper, with a fire poker, in the course … Continue reading Wittgenstein, Popper and the Poker

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Opinion

Trump’s Dylanesque Genius

BY SEAN WALSH When I was a child and showing worrying signs of growing up to become me, my parents put me up for investigation by all manner of psychologists and other con-artists. The experts gave me these “psychometric” tests and also exercises in something called “numerical reasoning”. Some of the questions went a bit like this: What is the next number in the following … Continue reading Trump’s Dylanesque Genius

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Politics

Keir’s Class Confusion

BY STEWART SLATER “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” wrote Wittgenstein, thereby changing the world. For the “Linguistic Turn” he spawned in philosophy changed the task of the practitioners of his discipline from inventing new entities and processes to explain the world (Plato’s Forms, Hegel’s Dialectic etc.) to ruthlessly weeding out all propositions which failed their test of meaning. That those who … Continue reading Keir’s Class Confusion

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